farevsfuretTell them apart

Which to use

“fare” and “furet” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#45,039
“fare” frequency rank
#28,567
“furet” frequency rank
73606
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fare furet
Definition Pêche solennelle que les pêcheurs faisaient pour leur fête, vers le mois de mai, et qui fut interdite en 1670, parce qu’elle dépeuplait les rivières. Petit carnivore de la famille des mustélidés, forme domestique (Mustela putorius furo) du putois (Mustela putorius putorius).

Where the eye mixes fare and furet

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
fare
5 ch
furet

Visual trap between fare and furet

A purely visual mix-up. fare (\faʁ\) and furet (\fy.ʁɛ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 73606, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fare is recorded at frequency rank #45,039, classified as anoun, pronounced \faʁ\. furet is at rank #28,567, tagged as anoun, pronounced \fy.ʁɛ\.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 73606, this pair ranks #39,872 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of fare vs furet

Shared letters: efr. Private to "fare": a. Private to "furet": tu.

"fare" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "furet" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fareafre · farre · ffare · frae
  • furetffuret · fruet · fuert · furett · furret · furte · ufret

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "fare" for "furet" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\faʁ\ versus \fy.ʁɛ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "fare" or "furet" show up more?
"furet" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28,567 in our French list, against #45,039 for "fare". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "fare" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "furet" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #39,872 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fare" and "furet" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fare vs Fee". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #39,872 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list